BORROWNESS.
The next afternoon the grey ponies trotted Mona down to Granton.
It was strange to find herself on the deck of a steamer once more;
the same experience as that of yesterday, and yet how different!
Yesterday she had been the centre of her little circle--admired,
flattered, indulged by every one; to-day she was nothing and
nobody--a young woman travelling alone. And yesterday, she kept
assuring herself, was the anomaly, the exception; to-day was in the
ordinary course of things--a fair average sample of life.
It would have been strange if her thoughts had been very bright ones,
and a heavy ground-swell on the Forth did not tend to make them any
brighter.
"It's a cross-water, ye ken," an old countryman was explaining to a
friend. "They say ye might cross the Atlantic, an' no' get onything
waur."
The wind was chill and cutting, and it carried with it an easterly
haar, that seemed to penetrate to Mona's very marrow. She was
thankful when they reached Burntisland, and she found herself
ensconced in a dirty, uncomfortable third-class carriage.
"If Borrowness is your destination," Mr Colquhoun had said, "it is
not a question of getting there sooner or later; it is a question of
never getting there at all;" and so Mona began to think, as the train
drew up for an indefinite period at every little station. And yet
she was not anxious to hasten her arrival. The journey from
Edinburgh to Borrowness was short and simple, compared with that
which her mind had to make from the life behind to the life before.
"I have no right to enter upon it in the spirit of a martyr," she
said to herself, "even if that would make it any easier. For better
or worse it is all my own doing. And I will not dream the time away
in prospects and memories. I will take up each day with both hands,
and live it with all my might."
The twilight was beginning to gather when at length the guard shouted
"Borrowness!" and Mona sprang to her feet and looked out.
It was a quiet, dreary, insignificant wayside station. A few men
were lounging about--fisher-folk chiefly--and one woman.
No, that could not be her cousin Rachel.
During her life in London, Mona had often met an elderly lady whose
dress was sufficiently eccentric to attract attention even in
"blessed Bloomsbury." A short wincey skirt, a severely
uncompromising cloth jacket, and a black mushroom hat, had formed a
startling contrast to the frivolities in vogue; and, by some curious
freak of fancy, a mental picture of this quaint old lady had always
flashed into Mona's mind when she thought of her cousin.
But the woman on the platform was not like that. Her face was ruddy
and good-natured, and her dress was a hideous caricature of the
fashion of the year before. Every picturesque puff and
characteristic excrescence was burlesqued to the last point
compatible with recognition. Mona might have met fifty such women in
the street, and never have noticed their attire; but the hang of that
skirt, the showiness of that bonnet, the general want of cut about
every garment, as seen in that first momentary glance, were burnt
into her recollection for a lifetime.
"No doubt, the woman I used to meet in London was a duchess," she
thought a little bitterly, "but this cannot be my cousin Rachel."
She gave an order to the porter, alighted from the carriage, and
waited--she scarcely knew for what. She was the only young woman who
got out of the train there; so if Rachel Simpson were anywhere in
sight, she must soon identify her cousin by a process of exclusion.
And so she did.
But she did it very slowly and deliberately, for Mona was looking
rather impressive and alarming in her neat travelling dress, not at
all unlike some of the young ladies who came to stay at the Towers.
The train puffed away out of the station, and then the little woman
came up with a curious, coy smile on her ruddy face, her head a
little on one side, and an ill-gloved hand extended. Mona learned
afterwards that this was her cousin's best company manner.
"Miss Maclean?" she said half shyly, half familiarly.
"Yes: I am Mona Maclean. I suppose you are my cousin Rachel?"
They kissed each other, and then there was an awkward silence.
Rachel Simpson was thinking involuntarily, with some satisfaction,
that she had seen Mona in a third-class carriage. She herself
usually travelled second, and the knowledge of this gave her a
grateful and much-needed sense of superiority, as regarded that one
particular. She wondered vaguely whether Mona would object to having
been seen under such disadvantageous circumstances.
"I suppose my luggage arrived about a fortnight ago?" said Mona,
forcing herself to speak heartily. "You were kind enough to say you
would give it house-room. What shall I do about this little valise?"
"Oh, the man will bring it to-night. Bill," she said familiarly to
the rough-looking porter, "mind and bring that little trunk when ye
gang hame."
"Ay," said the man, without touching his cap.
Rachel Simpson was one of the many lower middle-class people in
Scotland who talk fairly good English to their equals and superiors,
but who, in addressing their inferiors, relapse at once into the
vernacular. Mona greatly admired the pure native Scotch, and had
looked forward to hearing it spoken; but her cousin's tone and
accent, as she addressed this man, jarred on her almost unbearably.
Mona was striving hard, too, to blot out a mental picture of Lady
Munro, as she stood on the platform at Newcastle, giving an order
with queenly graciousness to the obsequious porter.
The two cousins walked home together. The road was very wet with
recent rain, and they had to pick their steps in a way that was not
conducive to conversation; but they talked eagerly about the weather,
the crops, the crossing to Burntisland, and everything else that was
most uninteresting. Mona had never mentioned the Munros nor her
visit to Norway.
In about five minutes they reached the house, and indeed it was not
such a bad little house after all, opening, as it did, on a tiny,
well-kept garden. The two windows on the ground-floor had of course
been sacrificed to the exigencies of the "shop"; and as they went in,
Mona caught a glimpse of some extraordinary hats and bonnets in one
window, and of dusty stationery and sundry small wares in the other.
"Marshall & Snelgrove and Parkins & Gotto," she said to herself
judicially, "and I suppose Fortnum & Mason, are represented by those
two wooden boxes of sweetmeats beside the blotting-books."
As they opened the glass door, the automatic shop-bell rang sharply,
and an untidy girl looked out from the kitchen.
"It's you," she said briefly, and disappeared again.
Rachel Simpson would never have dreamt of giving a domestic order in
the hearing of a visitor, so she went into the kitchen, and a
whispered conversation took place while Mona waited in the passage.
The old-fashioned clock ticked loudly, and the air was close and
redolent of rose-leaves and mustiness. Evidently open windows were
the exception here, not the rule. The house seemed curiously far
away from the beach, too, considering how small the town was.
"If I can only catch a glimpse of the sea from my bedroom window,"
thought Mona, "I shall be happy in a garret."
But it was no garret to which her cousin presently conducted her,
nor, alas! did it command a view of the sea. It was a fair-sized
room above the kitchen--a room filled up with ugly, old-fashioned
furniture--and its window overlooked a wide prospect of cabbage-beds.
"Just come into the front parlour when you get off your things," said
Rachel, "and we'll have a cup of tea."
"Thank you," said Mona pleasantly, and she was left alone.
She seated herself absently on a chair, and then sprang suddenly to
her feet again.
"Well, you don't suppose you are going to take stock now," she said
to herself savagely. "Wash your hands, and be quick about it!"
She took the liberty of opening the window first, however. The upper
sash declined to move at all, and the lower one slipped down again as
often as she raised it. In vain she looked about the room for
something to support it.
"Stay open you shall," she said, "if I put my own head underneath!
but I will resort to the Family Bible first," and her eye rested on
the substantial volume that surmounted the chest of drawers.
Finally, she rolled her travelling cloak into a tight bundle, and
propped up the sash with that.
"A little rain will do you no harm," she said, "and a little air will
do this musty hole a vast deal of good."
She looked about for hot water, but there was none, so with a shiver
she washed in cold. Then after a glance at the distorting
looking-glass, to make sure that her hair was smooth and her
expression tolerably amiable, she betook herself to the front parlour.
There was no fire in the grate. There never was a fire in that grate
while the white curtains were up, from May to October. Rachel often
indulged in the luxury of sitting by the kitchen fire when she was
alone on a chilly evening, and had Mona known this she would
thankfully have done the same; but Rachel's "manners" were her strong
point, and she would have been horrified at the idea of suggesting
such a thing to a comparative stranger. When Mona had really settled
down, she could afford to be comfortable again, to use the old brown
teapot, put away the plated spoons, and keep her Sunday bonnet for
Sunday.
In truth the teapot on the table was a wonderful thing, and Rachel
glowed with pride as Mona's eye returned to it incessantly; but Mona
was only thinking vaguely that she had never before seen one single
object--and that not a very big one--which so absolutely succeeded in
setting at defiance every canon of common decency in art.
But all at once she thought of Rachel's affectionate letters, and her
heart smote her. This woman, with her shop and all her ugly
surroundings, her kind heart and her vulgar formalities, seemed to
Mona so infinitely pathetic that, tired and overstrained as she was,
she bit her lip to keep back a rush of tears.
"Do you know, dear," she said warmly, "it is very kind of you to have
me here."
"Oh, I'm only too glad to have you, if you can make yourself happy."
"No fear of that. Give me a day or two to settle down, and I shall
be as happy as a king."
"Yes, it does just take a while to get used to new ways and new
people; but blood is thicker than water, I say. My niece, now, had
settled down wonderfully. She knew all my ways, and we were so
suited to each other. She was a great hand at the millinery, too; I
suppose that's not much in your line?"
Mona laughed. "I was going to say, like the Irishman, that I did not
know, because I had never tried," she said; "but I do trim my own
summer hats. I should enjoy it immensely." "And it will go hard
with me," she added to herself, "but I shall eclipse those
productions in the window."
"I am afraid," said Rachel uneasily, "we could not sell plain things
like you had on. It was very nice and useful and that, of course,
but they are all for the feathers and flowers here."
"Oh, I should not attempt a hat like mine. It takes genius to do a
really simple thing, don't you think so?"
Rachel laughed, uncertain whether to take the remark in jest or
earnest. "Well, you know," she said doubtfully, "it is easier to
cover a hat up like."
"Very much," agreed Mona.
"And now you must make a good tea, for I am sure you are hungry after
the journey. That's ham and eggs in front of you, and this is hot
buttered toast,--only plain food, you see. I have made your tea nice
and strong; it will do you more good."
"Farewell, sleep!" thought Mona, as she surveyed the prospect before
her; and it occurred to her that the sound of champagne, creaming
into a shallow glass, was one of the most delightful things on earth.
She blushed violently when her cousin said a moment later--
"I suppose you are blue-ribbon? Everybody nearly is now-a-days. It
is wonderful how many of the gentry have stopped having wine on their
tables. Nobody needs to have it now. The one thing is as genteel as
the other, and it makes a great difference to the purse."
"Doesn't it?" said Mona sympathetically, thankful that no answer had
been required to the original question. "And after all," she
thought, "when I am living a life like that of the cabbages at the
back, what do I want with the 'care-breaking luxury'?"
"I hope you don't object to the shop," Rachel went on presently, _à
propos_ apparently of the idea of gentility. "I don't really need it
now, and it never did very much in the way of business at the best;
but I have got used to the people dropping in, and I would miss it.
And you knew the ladies, the minister's wife and the doctor's wife
like, they come in sometimes and have a cup of tea with me: they
don't think me any the less genteel for keeping a shop. But I always
tell everybody that it is not that I require to do it. Everybody in
Borrowness knows that, and of course it makes a difference."
"The question of 'gentility,'" said Mona, with a comical and saving
recollection of Lucy's letter, "seems to me to depend entirely on who
does a thing, and the spirit in which it is done, not on the thing
itself."
"That is just it. They all know me, you see, and they know I am not
really caring about the shop at all. Why, they can see that whiles I
lock the door behind me and go away for a whole day together."
Mona bit her lip and did not attempt an answer this time.
It was still early when she excused herself and went to her room.
She paced up and down for a time, and then stopped suddenly in front
of the looking-glass. It had become a habit with her, in the course
of her lonely life, to address her own image as if it were another
person.
"It is not that it is terrible," she said gravely; "I almost wish it
were; it is just that it is all so deadly commonplace. Oh, Lucy, I
_am_ an abject idiot!" And like the heroines of the good old days,
when advanced women were unknown, she threw herself on the great
four-post bed and burst into a passion of tears.
The torrent was violent but not prolonged. In a few minutes she
threw away her handkerchief and looked scornfully at her swollen face.
"After all," she said philosophically, "I suppose a good howl was the
cheapest way of managing the thing in the long-run. That will be the
beginning and the end of it. _Hörst du wohl?_--And if it so please
you, Mistress Lucy, I don't regret what I have done one bit, and I
would do the same thing to-morrow."
She curtseyed low to the imaginary Lucy, betook herself to bed, and
in spite of grief, excitement, and anxiety, in spite of ham and egg,
strong tea and hot buttered toast, she slept like a healthy animal
till sunrise.